The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre Doubles Down On His ‘Good Guy With A Gun’ Argument

After slamming Democrats, “European-style socialists,” and the FBI for most of his address at the 2018 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), NRA President Wayne LaPierre repeated his infamous Sandy Hook comments. “I said, five years ago after that horrible tragedy in Newtown, and I wish — oh god I wish — more had heeded my words” he began. “Lean in, listen to me now, and never forget these words: to stop a bad guy with a gun, it takes a good guy with a gun.” Unsurprisingly the crowd erupted with a standing ovation for the speech, despite the fact that the Parkland, Florida shooting was just over a week old.

What could possibly go wrong? (Uproxx won’t let me post links, so I’ll just post the first paragraph from a few news stories in recent years)

A teacher at a Pennsylvania Christian school accidentally left her loaded pistol in a bathroom, where elementary school children found it, Pennsylvania State Police said Tuesday.

A Utah elementary school teacher with a state permit to carry a concealed firearm in class shot herself in the leg when the handgun went off, apparently by accident, while she was in a faculty restroom on Thursday, school district officials said.

An East Texas school maintenance worker was in fair condition Thursday after being accidentally shot during a district-sponsored handgun safety class, according to local media. The concealed handgun license class is part of an effort to permit teachers to carry firearms in schools in Van, Texas, the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported.

When he compared banks, nba games and movie star security to that of schools was just insane. These are privately paid for guards/cops. The school system is hard up enough for cash as it is and now you want to somehow make room in the budget for armed guards?!?!?! They really want to do everything then can to mitigate an event/situation rather than preventing it.

The fucking good guys with guns are supposed to be the fucking cops, for fuck sake. I’m sorry, I generally don’t advocate punching old people in the face but this could use a good knock-his-dentures out slap, at the very least.

The very idea – arming teachers with handguns – goes directly against the fact that a handgun only beats rifle if both shooters on inside of, perhaps 5 yards of one another. If you assume both shooters are equally competent, any further away and the rifle will always win.
Besides all that, they like to gloss over things like ‘tactics’ and ‘strategy’ or, you know, body armor.
In the most recent shooting, the dude wore a gas masked, used smoke bombs, and pulled the fire alarm specifically to funnel everyone into the hallways so he could create a ‘target rich environment (actual tactical term, not my own creation). That’s a fucking strategy. And some rando teacher with a pistol would’ve been hard pressed to counter that.
Now, many of these people, while clearly fucked up in the head, are not complete idiots because they develop and implement an actual strategy when they do this crazy-ass shit. And anyone who might want to attack a school (for example) and who knows that teachers might be armed with handguns, wouldn’t even have to enter the school. Just pick a sniper perch facing a main entrance and wait for the recess bell. Good luck countering that with a fucking teacher rocking a sidearm.

Sorry…hit post before actually finishing my post.
And body armor. Shit. Remember those two dudes that robbed that bank waaaay back in the day in California who were decked out in full body armor? They proceeded to just calmly walk through the streets having an open gun battle with a shitload of cops. My point is that if a shooter with a semi-auto rifle + max round magazine wearing body armor shows up at a school, and he’s got even a basic plan, the pistol-wearing teacher should GTFO immediately, not engage in a fucking shootout with the badguy.

The fact that people believe that a guy with a gun that has a couple weeks training or whatever will be able to competently pick out the bad guy in a crowd of panicked people/kids/other teachers etc like he fucking Rambo astonished me. Military and police, the ones that do this kind of thing, infantry, swat, train all day, every day for this situation. And when the shit hits the fan, guess what? Sometimes even they panic, freeze, miss! In the real world, it’s not a good argument.

I’m not sure I’d trust any teacher I had growing up to be an Olympic marksmen to fire a bullet into a shooter’s head from down the hall, using a handgun, while 400 screaming kids are running towards them.

Remember Philando Castile, the school employee with a concealed weapons permit, trained and law-abiding? Remember when he got executed by the cops for no reason, and the NRA didn’t say jack fucking shit about it?

Please, don’t think for a second, that the NRA gives a fuck about the lives of kids or teachers. However, they do see a market for new gun sales by forcing school districts to buy guns.

Exactly! A simplistic response to a complicated situation. How about making sure we have enough highly-trained good guys with guns (police), who are better armed and better trained than the bad guys. How about doing everything we can to make it as hard as possible for a bad guy to get an assault rifle and high-capacity magazines?